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Canada is looking at changing the way it screens prospective blood donors, so that eligibility for men would no longer depend on whom they choose to sleep with.

Advocacy groups have criticized the country’s rules — which list a year of abstinence as donor eligibility criteria for men who have had sex with another man — as stigmatizing and outdated.

At a meeting next week in Toronto, local and international researchers will explore new blood screening methods, like behaviour-based screening. The gathering is funded by Health Canada, which gave $3 million to Héma-Quebec and the Canadian Blood Services, in part for research “to ensure non-discriminatory practices.”

Canada’s blood donation rules were updated this past summer, shortening the timeline a man was required to wait after having sex with another man to one year from five, providing he meets all other requirements to donate blood. Up until 2013, a man who had sex with another man was banned from donating blood in Canada for life.

Canada’s current rules don’t just restrict men who have sex with men from giving blood, but impact their ability to donate organs as well. For now, the wait is five years from the last time a man had sex with a man, with the possibility for a doctor to make an exception with patient consent.

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Ross FitzGerald, a spokesperson for Canadian Blood Services said in an email that “a focused effort toward evidence-based change is most certainly underway.” The organization’s website says the meeting next week aims to find ways to close “knowledge gaps” that impact the ability for men who have had sex with men to donate blood.

“As an openly gay man who is unable to donate blood, I want to know that this is going to go away and never come back,” said Michael Bach, CEO of the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion, who will attend the meeting.

Bach hopes the meeting will lead to research that will allow for a behavior-based eligibility system to be adopted in the country. He doesn’t know how long the process will take, but hopes data can be presented to the federal government by early 2018.

“We are not talking about something simple, we are talking about something that has impact on every Canadian and we want to make sure we do it right from the start,” he said.

While the issue is not uniquely controversial in Canada, it is especially sensitive here. In the 1980s, thousands of Canadians were exposed to Hepatitis C and HIV through contaminated blood products leading to an expensive class action lawsuit. The Red Cross, who was in control of the country’s blood supply at the time, was then replaced by Héma- Quebec and the Canadian Blood Services.

Jody Jollimore, policy director at the Community-Based Research Centre for Gay Men’s Health in Vancouver, said his organization feels the current policy is unacceptable.

“. . . It’s a blanket statement that treats all gay and bisexual men the same,” Jollimore said. “And we know that there are many gay men who are not having high risk interactions therefore it simply doesn’t make sense to screen them out of the blood supply . . . ”

Gary Lacasse, executive director of the Canadian AIDS Society thinks the current regulations are discriminatory, but believes that Canadian data is needed to back a change in protocol.

Canadian Blood Services’ website said that there is a gap in health data on men who have sex with men that are considered low risk. All blood collected is screened for a range of diseases, including HIV, but the organization notes there is a brief period when HIV can not be detected right after infection.

“These little acts remind society that it’s OK to discriminate against gay men and I think that’s wrong, and it really hurts people, especially young people who see this message,” said Keith Reynolds, who wants to donate but can’t because of the regulations.

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